I’m ten days late to Poetry Month. So, in penance, I’ll be posting poems every blog this month and a few more on my socials. Because if the world needs anything right now, It’s poetry.
Here’s an odd little collection. Read, sift through, taste them on your tongue, roll them over your neurons and let them…sink in.
Poem Speaks
She scribbled me down
in the depths of anguish
The sharp lines that cut through
conventions of writing forms
and cursive norms
uncaring of limits or margins
for there were none to her suffering
no lines could contain
the horror that poured
fresh blood on the page
She died on that page, over and over
for nights on end
awash in loneliness
visions of failure
longing for the final epilogue
and all I could do was trail behind the pen
powerless to stop the deluge
helpless to stop the stabbing wounds
of ink and metal
I was merely the blood spattter
the aftermath
sometimes a river of words
flooded over with her tears
until she lay spent across the page
a traveler unable to cross that river
unable to battle the current
but unwilling to stop fighting
for safe shore
I loved her every word
her every dark thought and
the possession of her passion
that overtook those nights
Because at least when the damaged words flowed
and their messy calligraphy
misspelled itself across the page
there was breath to her
there was fire within
and she burned bright
in the blackness of a cold world
there was enough fodder of love to suffer
to ache
to ignite
The pause of me meant the death of her
the blank page was a heart
too weary to go on
a silent pen was a life ended
I persisted in the days when I was her written world
survived while she lived
in all her aching splendor
When she lies still,
pen laid to rest against desk
I will only breathe
if her words pass through
new eyes, ride across new tongues
I will be the fire she leaves behind.
S.E. Reichert
Tiny Speck Wanderer
Hey, tiny speck wanderer,
no more than a bird’s heart beat
A flutter of space dust,
careening out of control
headed into the black abyss
along with all the other
stardust heart beats.
What’s one head of a pin
drumming on a thimble mean
to a galaxy of celestial beings?
Don’t you ever feel small?
No matter to your matter, at all?
The moon takes up a quarter’s space
to those tiny bead eyes
Jupiter—the mighty giant
just a hole in the dark night’s skin,
pricked by needle tip.
Yet there you spin,
the world in orbit around you
The cares of your heart
the temperature of your feet
the hunger or fullness
weight or lightness in your belly.
The love worn or tossed away,
Suddenly the concern of the cosmos.
Tiny speck wanderer
The universe beats for you.
in the petite coils of your
Underrepresented brain junk.
A flutter of space dust—
with universal ego.
S.E. Reichert
Untitled 1-24
I swing from suicide
to bird song
in the hair-breadth
of a star
one shade dark
now light
but...
When I have purpose
the pendulum halts
the need for center
a string of balance hangs
my sanity
and...
When unrequited and impossible love
teases the fluttering edges
of this tattered heart
I forget that I want to jump
off a bridge
in the small moments of
polite conversation
so...
Even when
its all just illusion
the empty purpose,
and impossibility of love
the light from a star
billions of years ago
now dead and gone...
They are the precarious
threads of hope
from which I swing.
Found
when they find me
i will be alone
the questions and headshakes
directed in quizzical depths
to the loam and silt they cannot sort through
no reasoning to be caught
in bucket or screen
when they find me
dressed as animals are
in the skin i was in
the day i roared into the plain
i will shock in cold white
filled with trout breath
and minnow kisses
When they find me
broken shell
battered
lovely in purple and blue
head struck rock
knee scraped branches
lips in shades to make
mountain bluebell envious
they will lament
such wasted splendor
when they find me
the questions of why
i was lost to the brine
a jointer to the self-takers before me
whispers will static the air
of all the ways i failed
and too long loitered in futility
when they find me
they will burn the empty package
while I sneak,
soul-snake in water
down river bends to the sea
never to be found again
This Isn't a Poem for You
So this isn’t a poem for the broken hearted
it is not for those who were left behind
or ghosted
or dumped
or abused
or disregarded
This is a poem for those who watched
as another soul walked away
sat in their silence
was released from another person’s life
faced pain at their hands
or were simply ignored
into nothingness…
You are the warriors of time
you, who have felt the sting
of heart break
and disappointments
you are the carriers of grief
and the bodies made of scars
and you have lived through
every burning cut
and every lonely night
This is not for the soul they broke,
this is for the you that survived.
This is not a sermon from some high tower
that you are stronger for it
that you are braver because of it
that you are a better person
a heart bigger,
with these new and ragged cracks
to let the light in
I will only tell you what I know
You survived.
you packed up your heart and your mind
and you moved on
you accepted their silence
you treated your wounds and closed the door
you started paying attention to yourself
when they no longer did
and that carries weight
self determination
and the ability to move past
the fickle and soft-seated lies,
of a love always perched to flee
the very second things got hard
Your feet remain grounded
and you outlasted
You heart is a seasoned warrior
and it may never let another in
but it doesn’t have space anyway
because in their absence
beyond the echoes of their abuse
the pain of their mistreatment,
you’ve filled your heart
with the unfaltering love
of yourself
they can’t ever move back in
there isn’t room any more.
